Love, Hate & Propaganda

The first time Heinrich Hoffman tries to take a photograph of Adolf Hitler he is beaten to a pulp and his camera smashed. And then the Nazis change their minds, and hire Hoffman as Hitler's official photographer. It is the beginning of a propaganda campaign carefully orchestrated by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels that is built around the image of the "Führer”. A film called Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl shows the whole world how powerful Hitler has become. It is the most sophisticated piece of demagoguery anyone has ever seen in any medium. Throughout the 1930s Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, use propaganda to terrifying effect as they stoke German pride and spread hatred toward the Jews and other minorities.

When Adolf Hitler begins his campaign of conquest in 1939, most Germans actually don't want war. But Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels use every tool of propaganda to change their minds. German pride is invoked to justify the invasion of Poland and France -among other countries. Dark messages of hatred are used to persuade Germans that minorities should be stripped of their rights, deported or sent to “detention” camps. It is the beginning of the Nazi campaign of genocide. Hitler's despotism would have its admirers in France and even in far-away Japan. But in 1940 Hitler and Goebbels would also discover just how far they can push the German people before some begin to ask questions.

In 1941, Joseph Stalin thought he could count on his alliance with Germany to protect his Russia from the fires of war that are sweeping Europe. And then Adolf Hitler changes his mind and invades, sweeping through Russia with brutal efficiency. How would Communist dictator Joseph Stalin persuade his people to rise up when the Germans appear unbeatable? With a skillful appeal to Russian nationalism, Stalin convinces millions to take up arms. Among them a young woman named Lyudmilla Pavlichenko. Her deadly accuracy as a sniper would make her a useful tool of propaganda, inspiring others to fight and survive.

Germany and Japan have mastery of the seas and control of the major theatres of war. But by 1943, the tide is changing and both countries will have to change their messaging accordingly to reflect a new emerging reality. Truth and Total War tells the story of how “total war” proves a major turning point for all combatants and how the stories propagandists on all sides told tell their populations have to be accordingly adjusted.

With the D-Day invasion in June 1944, the Allies finally establish a beachhead in France and begin to roll back the Nazi forces. In order not to dampen morale, the Allied High Command hides the true human cost of taking Normandy, both for the allied soldiers and for the unfortunate citizens of Northern France who will suffer enormous casualties as the Germans retreat and the Allies advance. Canada”s master of propaganda, John Grierson, explains why “withholding the truth” is not the same as spreading lies – such as German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels has done throughout the war.

By 1945, propaganda machines that had geared populations for war now have to prepare them for peace. With the end of the war, and the beginning of the Cold War, enemies would become partners and allies would become foes.